Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images

Given the slew of injuries they’ve sustained within their rotation while running up the National League’s fourth-best record (63-49) — not to mention their lack of an obvious Game 1 starter — the Cubs had as much reason to trade for Tarik Skubal as any contender. Reportedly, they at least considered the possibility of dealing for the two-time Cy Young winner, yet like every World Series hopeful besides the Dodgers, they yielded to the two-time defending champions. On Sunday, however, the Cubs did land a substantial reinforcement for their rotation, acquiring 35-year-old righty Kevin Gausman from the Blue Jays in exchange for a pair of prospects, infielder Ty Southisene and outfielder Brett Bateman.

The connection between Toronto and Chicago made particular sense when I highlighted the likelihood that the Blue Jays would approach Monday’s trade deadline as sellers. Gausman, who is making $23 million in the final season of a five-year, $110 million contract, has a limited no-trade clause that allows him to block deals to eight teams, a list that reportedly includes the Brewers, Mariners, Pirates, and White Sox, all of whom are in the hunt for a playoff spot — but notably not the Cubs. As I noted in late June, at the time they traded for then-struggling Mets lefty David Peterson, five of the six pitchers forecast to throw the most innings for Chicago in our preseason Positional Power Rankings were on the injured list, and seven of the 11 pitchers who had made at least one start for the team (including openers) had landed on the IL at least once. The Cubs’ climb to the top of the NL Wild Card scrum since then justified further investment, and to their credit, less than 24 hours after Skubal was dealt, they made their move.

The trade was actually the second between the Cubs and Blue Jays on Sunday. Earlier in the day, Chicago sent 34-year-old righty Jameson Taillon, whom it had designated for assignment last Monday, to Toronto in exchange for cash or a player to be named later. More on him below, but first Gausman, who has not pitched as badly as either his 5-10 record or 4.38 ERA indicate. Though the latter mark is his highest since 2019, his 3.51 FIP is just one-tenth of a point higher than last season’s mark. His peripherals are only a hair or two worse than they were last year; the big issue is a 51-point spike in BABIP:

That spike has happened despite contact stats that represent slight improvements over 2025:

In this view, the biggest difference from 2025 is that Gausman went from outperforming his expected batting average and slugging percentage to underperforming them. I suspect that’s because batters are pulling the ball in the air against him more frequently, with a rate that’s risen from 16.0% last year to 17.6% this year, but it can’t hurt that the Cubs have a defense that rates as one of the best across a variety of measures. They currently lead the majors in both Defensive Runs Saved (76) and Statcast’s Fielding Run Value (55), and rank third in the majors in Defensive Efficiency (.719) behind the Dodgers and Rays.

Gausman’s general approach remains more or less the same as it’s been throughout his run with the Blue Jays. His four-seamer and splitter account for almost 90% of his pitches, with his slider covering the rest of them, albeit with a big difference based on batter handedness: He throws the slider to righties 20.1% of the time, but to lefties only 3.3% of the time. He’s lost a bit of velocity relative to 2025, with his four-seamer dipping from 94.5 mph to 93.9 and his splitter from 84.9 to 84.0, and batters have increased their slugging percentages against both pitches slightly relative to 2025 despite lower expected slugging percentages. Though its velocity is middling, Gausman’s four-seamer remains an effective pitch thanks to the extra arm-side run it gets. Statcast values it at 12 runs above average, good for eighth in the majors. Oddly, his splitter grades out as one run below average, according to Statcast, despite generating the third-highest whiff rate (39.8%) of any qualifier, and just a .263 wOBA.

With a pair of 10-game winning streaks as well as a 10-game losing streak, the Cubs have had their ups and downs this season, and injuries to the rotation have been one of their defining traits. Opening Day starter Matthew Boyd totaled 10 weeks on the IL for a biceps strain and a torn meniscus in his left knee, which he suffered while playing with his children. NL Rookie of the Year runner-up Cade Horton made just two starts before needing Tommy John surgery. Taillon missed six weeks due to a left hamstring strain. Ben Brown and Edward Cabrera are both currently sidelined, the former due to what was recently reclassified as a stress reaction to a bone in his neck (rather than an osteoma, a benign bone growth), the latter with strains of both his left hamstring and adductor. Justin Steele suffered a flexor strain while rehabbing from April 2025 Tommy John surgery, reaching the point where president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer conceded that it was unrealistic for him to ramp up to a full starter’s work load before the end of the season. Even so, the lefty could still help out of the bullpen.

Amid all of those injuries, Cubs starters have put up a 4.23 ERA (seventh in the NL) and a 4.69 FIP (13th), though their use of openers ahead of Javier Assad and Colin Rea blurs the distinctions between starters and relievers. Overall, the team ranks fifth in the NL in ERA (4.09) and 12th in FIP (4.65), with that 0.56 runs per nine gap standing out as the largest in the majors, and again, owing a debt to the defense.

Among the club’s top starters, Shota Imanaga is the only one who’s avoided the IL; he’s pitched to a 3.67 ERA but a 4.43 FIP in 127 2/3 innings. Boyd has pitched well when available, posting a 3.41 ERA and a 3.55 FIP in 66 innings, and Brown was in the midst of a breakout before going down, with a 1.85 ERA and a 2.50 FIP in 68 innings. On the other hand, Assad, Rea, Cabrera, and Peterson all have either an ERA or a FIP of 4.78 or higher, with Cabrera above 5.00 in both departments. Gausman might very well be this group’s Game 1 starter in a playoff series, and even with Boyd and Imanaga behind him, that’s not an especially imposing unit, particularly given the team’s fourth-starter options. Brown, who last pitched on June 19, has not yet returned to throwing off a mound, and is nearing the point where working out of the bullpen will become his most realistic route back to the roster.

Regarding the two minor leaguers heading to Toronto, my colleagues Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan assigned a 35+ FV to both Southisene and Bateman when placing them 27th and 30th, respectively, on the team’s list in May. The 21-year-old Southisene was a fourth-round pick in 2024 out of a Henderson, Nevada high school. In a season split between A-level Myrtle Beach and High-A South Bend, he’s hit .311/.431/.378 (126 wRC+) while continuing to show true 20-grade power; in over 700 professional plate appearances, he has yet to homer. Here’s what our prospect team had to say about our 5-foot-9, 170 pounder in May:

The Cubs paid Southisene $1 million to bypass his commitment to Tennessee, and while we like him, we didn’t consider him a seven-figure prospect at draft time. Southisene plays with undeniable energy and hustle. He’s a short, ultra-twitchy little guy with a rhythmic swing, a hand hitch trigger, average bat speed, and a pretty extreme opposite field tendency. Southisense had more walks than strikeouts in his pro debut and stole 41 bases, but he slugged under .300, which is consistent with our visual report of his power. He makes some nice plays at short because of guile and grit, but some of those plays are the kind that more typically-sized shortstops make look routine. We like Southisene as a grinder extra infielder and expect that he’ll begin to play other positions as he traverses the minors.

In an updated assessment of the two prospects provided to me after the trade, Brendan Gawlowski noted the belief that Southisene projects as an average defender at shortstop if his arm improves, but his ceiling is likely as a utility player. As for the 24-year-old Bateman, he was an eighth-round pick out of the University of Minnesota in 2023, and hit .312/.431/.422 (126 wRC+) with 20 steals at Triple-A Iowa before being traded. Like Southisene, Bateman is comparatively small in stature (5-foot-10, 170 pounds), and as that high on-base percentage suggests, he walks a ton: 17.3% of the time this year, compared to an 18.8% strikeout rate. His 36.5% swing rate is one of the lowest in the organization; his prospect report describes him as “one of the more patient, thumb-twiddling hitters in the minors.”

More from that report:

He tracks pitches well, covers the top of the strike zone, and slaps a lot of contact to the opposite field. Bateman runs just well enough to stick in center field, and he plays the position with the sort of infectious, reckless abandon that fires up his teammates. At 5-foot-10, he’s smaller than a typical big leaguer; Giants outfielder Will Brennan (who got stronger in pro ball, but still isn’t especially powerful or big) is a fair comp for what to hope Bateman can grow into. Especially if opposing pitchers attack him fearlessly due to his lack of power, his OBP skills will probably dip if he ever gets sustained big league run. Still, Bateman’s ability to play a decent center field should keep him on the 40-man fringe for a while.

Bateman’s 20.1% chase rate is impressive, but as Gawlowski noted in his updated assessment, it climbs significantly with two strikes. “I tend to think that the ‘small guy, never swing, start chasing with two strikes, no power but a lot of walks’ skill set is a really, really tricky one that models tend to get fooled by,” he wrote to me. He also said that while Bateman’s speed keeps him playable in center, his reads on fly balls aren’t great. One positive he did add is that the Blue Jays are extremely good at developing strength, so they may get more out of him than another organization might — perhaps not enough to give him average pop, but at least to improve his overall outlook.

As for Taillon, the 34-year-old righty has struggled mightily when it comes to keeping the ball in the park, serving up a ghastly 2.96 homers per nine en route to a 5.92 ERA and a 6.73 FIP. His average four-seam velocity of 91.8 mph is 0.5 mph below his mark from both last year and 2024, and is 1.9 mph below what it was in 2023. Batters are slugging an unholy .743 against that four-seamer. The one thing that has gone very right for him is his sweeper, which he throws 16.7% of the time; batters have hit .130 and slugged .275 against the pitch with a 33.1% whiff rate. The Blue Jays may see if they can find a way to get something out of him, but they’re hardly committed to him given the low cost it took to acquire him. Plus, they’ve already filled the rotation vacancy left by the Gausman deal. On Monday morning, Toronto traded with the Angels for right-hander José Soriano, who has two more years of club control remaining.

The Cubs approached the deadline with a clear need for starting pitching, and with Gausman and before him Peterson, they’ve gotten some without giving up any high-level prospects. Their Depth Charts forecast currently places them 11th for rest-of-season WAR, though when the dust settles after the deadline, that may change. It’s worth remembering that less than a year ago, Gausman headed a very middle-of-the-pack rotation that ended up just an eyelash or two shy of a championship, putting up a 2.93 ERA in six October starts totaling 30 2/3 innings. Now we’ll see if he can help push the Cubs toward the World Series, too.